With proper support from hardware and software manufacturers, I'ld say certain distro's of Linux are fairly ready for the 'prime time'. In saying that, I'ld also say that software limitations as they sit at this time would make it difficult to implement Linux as a primary OS in business. The functionality of production software as a whole is still too limited on a Linux platform, although improvement continue to be made, commercial software companies such as MS and Adobe, as well as others, would need to produce Linux compatible applications to make Linux be widely accepted in the business community.
Now for your average non-gaming home user (ie. not tech geeks), that simply need a system that they can use for email, web surfing, simple photo editing, listening to some music or watching a dvd, etc., I'ld say Linux is ready for them. Taking Ubuntu and PCLinuxOS, since they've been mentioned quite a bit, they have virtually everything mom and pop need, right out of the box. For people not used to working with Windows, I'ld say either distro would be quite easy for them to learn the basics well enough for everyday use. I may even go so far to say it may be easier for someone with no pc know-how to learn than it is for some of us that have been using Windows based computers for years, because they wouldn't have to "un-learn" they ways of Windows. Both afformentioned distro's come complete with web browsers, e-mail clients, word processors, various multi-media software, not to mention better time killers than window's stock games
.
I won't say there aren't aspects of windows that make it easier to use for the general user. Things like plug-n-play hardware, automatic desktop icon creation when installing virtually any program, automatic codec downloading and installation in media players, automatic updates (which Ubuntu has handled well for me so far), make life easier for the person that doesn't know how, or prefers not to do manually. I'ld imagine that due to the liscensing issues, the problems with codecs will always exsist, and I know for me, as well as many others, it's a hassle to take care of.
Since I haven't been using Linux for very long, I can't comment on hardware recognition issues, all I know is the distro's I've used on this system have had only one issue, and it's one that I had in window's as well. The fix was to simply shut down, unplug my router and cable modem, then plug them back in and boot up so that IP's were resent through the chain.
There's one thing that Linux, in most forms, doesn't supply, and that's going to be the main thing that keeps linux out of the mainstream, regardless of how ready it is, for what I see to be a long long time. That one thing is direct customer support. If something goes wrong with a windows machine, there are many avenues a customer can take to get support. For Linux, as things stand now, the vast majority of support comes from community forums, which for most of us here is no problem at all, but for that 60 year old lady that doesn't even know what a forum is, that's a serious issue. I've had no problems at all finding information on the Ubuntu forums, or their wiki, to do pretty much anything I've wanted to do with it so far, but for the person that doesn't know how to find that information, or who really needs to have someone on the phone walking them through how to do what they need to do, there's no recourse.
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